


England, 1810.

by LaTerraNova



Category: Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
Genre: Angst, Cuddling & Snuggling, Falling In Love, First Kiss, M/M, Male Slash, Memories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-29
Updated: 2017-09-29
Packaged: 2019-01-06 21:24:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12219243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaTerraNova/pseuds/LaTerraNova
Summary: The events of Frankenstein occured at an unspecified time in the 18th century. Let us say that it was 1799. Eleven years later, there are some things to come to terms with. Robert Walton fell in love on that ship, and he recalls how it was to spend those last days with Victor. Angst and hurt/comfort.





	England, 1810.

Olivia Walton had found, in the dressing-table drawer, a bundle of papers bound by a string of leather. Removing it, she swept her fingers through them. A sizable amount, creased and soiled and by no means recent, although not exceptionally old. She skimmed the words briskly, picking out the odd sentence that only mystified her as to their origin. “I am by birth a Genevese…”, “That night, I beheld the accomplishment of my toils”, “Guided by a slight clue I followed the windings of the Rhone…” Folded at the back was a separate sheet, equally creased and faded but written in a different hand. The address immediately caught her attention. Her heart beat fast. “Dearest Walton, my dearest Walton. How can I express the feelings that I am now receptacle of? A perplexing multitude, they overwhelm & gladly so. Suddenly, I fear death. Our time together has been but brief, and this is my largest regret in a life of many, for you have been the one light. You are all that I could have desired, and perhaps all along I sought you unbeknownst. How often have I, so singular in purpose, near forgotten what had led me to these climes? To where did we look, as we sat at the edge of the world? I have told you what my mind’s eye beheld…” Her breath hitched as she approached the final lines, barely discernible in the erratic scrawl. At the creak of floorboards she turned sharply, and found Robert behind her in the doorframe. ‘Who is this?’ She held the letter aloft. Uneasily, he watched the lineaments of her face, took in the brown eyes that seemed to reflect the light as a casement window to a small room. ‘Someone that I loved.’ He sat down on the bed. He did not like to look at those papers, not any more. ‘More than anything in the world.’ She simply looked at him. Searching, unsure of herself. ‘Who was he? A sailor?’ She said then, her mind beginning to unfold a tale that she daren’t believe were truth - but it was not unheard of. She liked to think that she was not naïve. ‘No. And I see that you have my writings there - give them to me. That is his story, and I wrote it down and I kept it with me all these years, reading and re-reading his words till I could near recite them. The finest poet in describing him could but impart a mere quarter of what he was but I suppose that you would have called him a scientific man, if you want terms like that. We took him aboard the ship for he was out on the ice -’ He had to stop a moment, overcome with the emotion that always built up within his breast at the thought of him. His vision began to cloud, a tear escaped. She did not go to him. ‘I cannot begin to describe -’ And suddenly he smiled, sniffing. ‘He would say that, he always said that: “I cannot begin to describe”, and then he described the very thing! The fool! If only you had seen him, if only! You would not regard me thus. He had such lovely eyes. He didn’t understand, of course, how could he? But I would tell him, stroking their lids of a night as he lay against me. Beautiful eyes. They had a bit of a mad look at times, but nonetheless. He would ask me to talk, God knows why for towards the end I am not certain that he was even listening. He lost consciousness regularly...and then, only then, to make such a speech! He spoke to my crew like a bloody Roman, even in his ruin! I...I would tell you if it were possible, that speech...Olivia, when he was ill I held him so tightly, so that he would not fade from me. That he would not leave me. Tried to keep him warm…’ More tears wet his ashen cheek. Olivia stood with a look of reproach, bordering on fear. The distance that he had always sensed between them was now her very expression, mingled with disgust. ‘I never did love you, you know. You might well hear it now. My heart is with Victor Frankenstein and it will forever be. And I wish to God that he were here.’ 

He had gone far out into the fields that surrounded their home. The sun was now descending, draining the sky to a deep, late summer’s dusk. He stood at the top of the slope where the gnats hovered beneath the trees, and fixed his eye on the stretch of wheat, floating back and forth on itself so slightly on the imperceptible breeze. Further out, the mills, encroaching on the horizon with their steady billow. The landscape was changing, and more than likely not to its improvement. Time scarcely seemed to have passed since Victor. Wrapping the sheets around his emaciated figure in the hope of keeping him safe and warm, as though he would still feel it, Walton had stroked gently up and down his delicate back, attempting to soothe him even in death. A sound he had never known that he could make had risen in his throat and let loose into a primal howling as he wept into the crook of his friend’s neck. The crew had come in to find him shuddering there upon the bed and left without a word, too much for them to deal with. He put his lips to Victor’s ear, kissing and then whispering ‘Victor, I love you. Can you hear me? I love you more than life itself.’ He cradled him as he wished he could have done long ago, before it had been allowed to come to this. He would never have let anybody hurt Victor. How could he be gone? The man who had, with such a strange and beautiful almost-smile looked at him with those eyes, murmured mischievously that there was one thing he wished to do, should the chance escape him? The man who had then pressed his chapped lips against Walton’s own - a soft kiss on his surprised mouth. And tingling then, loaded with meaning, Walton had pressed back, slipping his tongue between them experimentally. Victor kissed almost lustfully, and yet his eyes glowed with love. It was a horror comparable to nothing else to look on those same lips, forever silenced and bruised with death. 

In the fields were hundreds of tombs. People that Walton did not know, but whose lives had passed between them nonetheless once as firm as he now stood, with the sun against their backs. All those voices lost to the cold obliqueness of eternity, that skeleton of a word. Where were they? Did they stand near him now, unseen and knowing that he thought of them? The very idea made him tremble. He recalled Victor’s note - it sounded in his mind, in his friend’s slight accent - “As you said so yourself, the sun here is forever visible. Think so our love. Some things unlike us are not temporal,” and he began to weep once more and threw himself down. ‘Victor, where are you? I hope that you can hear me. If I could do anything to have you again, I would. I miss you.’ He knew that it would be dark when he made his way home but he did not care. He lay there in the long grass, lit up in the last rays of the evening. Strange how, within his limbs, it was still possible to feel that first excitement of his journey. So long ago. He felt sometimes that it were possible to walk right back into yesterday, just as though his grandparents were still alive and he could walk over to their cottage with the warm glow of their dining room visible through the window. His grandmother, always laughing; the same chandelier hung above the table. It was lost forever and that seemed so false. Memory could recall it, he could reach into its dark recesses and find the moments, as vibrant as though they were before him, and he was as six years old again looking up into a benevolent old face that had somehow long ceased to be. Such moments felt as though they could continue, even though he was forever barred from re-entering them. How unthinkable in those days. And yet, you could not mourn something that still seemed to exist. 

No child could have wished for better grandparents but as he had grown older the connection had turned to misunderstanding and resentment, as with all of his relations and it was Victor who had lifted the veil from his eyes. Victor who had swept love and meaning into his heart. Victor, always go gentle and hesitant as he entwined his fingers affectionately with Walton’s. That was who he wept for. The man who, starved of touch, turned soft at any form of caress or embrace. ‘My beautiful Victor,’ Walton used to say, kissing along his neck as Victor squirmed with pleasure. And beautiful was the least that he had been, although perhaps he looked like no one else because he was not like anybody else. And God, it tore him apart, that he had not been able to care for him as he deserved. And yet, Victor’s existence was bound to his inextricably. Memory, mind, imagination. ‘Mourning is happy in a way,’ he thought, although his heart were breaking within him. ‘It’s a blessing to be able to feel so strongly, to have known him. This is only because I loved him so much.’ It was testament to Victor’s memory. ‘It’s the purest emotion,' Walton considered. And it was, almost purifying; the most warming and honest sensation that Walton had felt. It would be unfortunate to never feel thus, to never have tears for one such as Victor, to not have somebody like him enter his life. Some people never do. He should have lived, but was he gone? There was a midnight sun where Walton and Victor still lay, curled up in their cabin. It was as though time had not passed, when he retreated into his mind and recalled the dearest person he had known. Bitterly intangible, he wept, not sure if it were really any consolation; but they were still there. He had only to close his eyes.

_"My eyes are dim with childish tears, My heart is idly stirred, For the same sound is in my ears, Which in those days I heard..."_


End file.
